Matrix Games Forums

QoL
*It would be neat to have a button as 'go-to' for missions and such. For big maps, it's kinda hassle.

DLC SUGGESTION
Natural disasters.
The game has the best map generation. Amazing details with the planet. I feel like the game has the same issues as the other 4X games. late game is boring because once the player becomes a superpower and pushing relentlessly. Basically clearing the map.

It would be cool to have big natural disasters. Forest fires, tornados, sand storms, toxic rains, etc...

It would spice up the mid-late game as the player need to focus more on internal stuff.

Accidents at Nuclear and Volcanic Plants too, maybe.

Heh. I remember SMAC had an event where an volcanic eruption created a new island in under a year.

More realistic eruptions might be good for Shadow Empire; small chance of lava flows damaging everything on the erupting volcano's hexes, up to full blown Yellowstone-tier megaexplosion that obliterates everything on the hexes, damages everything nearby and reduces global temperature/rainfall/crop production for decades after.

Chances of hazardous volcanic activity increases as the planet's age decreases, along with tidal stress (moon count, distance to parent star) etc.

Yes volcanic eruptions could be great too.
I dont know if the game engine supports it but minor changes to the landscape via forest fires or other natural disasters... It would be great shuffe things around

Yeah, I'm surprised blanketing a forest hex with plasma missiles or atomics doesn't trigger a firestorm...

ORIGINAL: ruzen

Yes volcanic eruptions could be great too.
I dont know if the game engine supports it but minor changes to the landscape via forest fires or other natural disasters... It would be great shuffe things around

Ag facilities convert hexes around them into agriculture, so it's definitely possible for terrain types to change. Huge megaforming projects like SMAC would also be cool.

Yeah, an Alpha Centauri style transforming system would be epic. Making your planet more or less habitable over the course of a few decades would make things quite interesting.

ORIGINAL: ruzen

Yes volcanic eruptions could be great too.
I dont know if the game engine supports it but minor changes to the landscape via forest fires or other natural disasters... It would be great shuffe things around

The Open Air farm can expand it's fields up to 3 hexes away, transforming flat terrain into farmland.

So the engine definitely supports some degree of terraforming.

You most certainly right. It should support terraforming

-Fritz1776
Alpha Centauri style terraforming really makes the world a living space.
Ideology and personality stats already creates mini-stories in a natural way. Like Crusader Kings.
If the geography changes too, then it would create even more political conflicts. Maybe need to betray an ally for lands or decay of a superpower?

Alpha Centauri style megaforming is pretty impractical for a post-apoc society; each hex is 200km wide. That's an insane amount of dirt to move just to make a hill.

Well, it transformed 6000km² of heavy forest/marsh plains into agricultural hexes in my game. That was an insane amount of deforestation and drainage...

We aren't a post-apocalyptic society though. At least not forever. Sure, that might be the case at game start, but once you are a ways into the tech tree you have most definitely progressed to post-post-apocalypse, and that is well beyond our IRL techs. Of course the populations are a minuscule fraction of our own, but again that isn't unique. Heck, Alpha Centauri starts you off as a single survival colony on an uncharted alien world. Unless you think everything is being done with a medieval level of technology, clearing or creating mountains shouldn't be out of the question, and even in that absurd case it still wouldn't, just stupidly manpower intensive to the point of impracticality. Not that I was thinking that. More forestation and such which effects the atmospheric composition. So eventually making the world habitable for humans. Throw in some sequestration of harmful gasses, immunization against native life, and if the sun is cooperative you've got yourself a friendly environment for human life.